


After

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Descriptions of wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha wakes to find Loki in her room. He was supposed to be dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/gifts).



> For Lise, as a birthday gift!

Loki was dead. 

Thor had told them about Loki’s death months ago. 

Loki was dead, but that didn’t account for why Loki was in Natasha’s bedroom, not dead but possibly almost dead. 

He was bleeding on her carpet. 

Natasha had been sparring with Clint down in the lower levels of Stark Tower, where Tony had built a special training facility. She was tired, without her weapons, and when she walked into her room expecting to take a nice shower and let the warm water ease the tension from her muscles, she found a figure hunched over on the floor, a dark circle of blood slowly seeping into the carpet and spreading. 

She’d closed the door behind her, grabbed a knife, and grasped the long black hair of the injured figure, exposing his throat. She held the knife to his pale skin. 

As soon as she saw his thin face, she knew it was Loki. 

She was tempted to slit his throat then and there. 

“Why shouldn’t I call the others?” she asked instead. 

No answer. 

“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” 

“Do it,” Loki rasped. 

She wanted to. But something held her back. Curiosity, perhaps. “Thor said you were dead.” 

Loki grinned, sharp. “There are many things Thor doesn’t know,” he said. 

Natasha pressed the knife harder against Loki’s throat, drawing a small amount of blood. Loki’s breath hitched, and she noticed, as she watched red droplets form where the knife met skin, that there was a nasty looking scar that ran up Loki’s throat vertically, and as her eyes traveled upwards, that there were more scars in various states of healing on his cheeks. 

He was too thin. She could see that, too. 

And his eyes—there was something about them that chilled her. She’d seen eyes like that. She’d looked like that, a few times. 

Torture. 

“What happened?” she asked. 

“I didn’t die,” Loki said, the words soft like a sigh. 

“That’s not an answer,” Natasha told him. 

Loki suddenly slumped, and Natasha lost her grip on his hair and her knife slid across his throat, creating a thin red line, and there was a thud as Loki’s body hit the floor. 

“Shit,” Natasha muttered, putting the knife aside, well within her reach and out of Loki’s, and moving forward to turn Loki onto his back. 

Loki had various deep gashes crossing his stomach and torso, and one of his legs had been cut deep enough to see bone. Natasha swallowed. She didn’t know if he was going to die. She didn’t know if she should let him, if she should call someone. Jarvis should have alerted the others to Loki’s presence, but he was curiously silent. 

“Jarvis,” Natasha said.

No answer. Which meant that at some level, Loki was using magic. 

Natasha gathered a few towels and placed them on the floor, then placed Loki on top of them. She managed to clean some of his wounds as best she could, and felt a bit ill as her hands checked his body for other injuries and felt the give of broken bones. Loki groaned but didn’t wake. 

And then she took a seat on the bed, overlooking Loki on the floor, and waited. 

**

A scream tore Natasha from her thoughts. 

She’d been thinking about whether to tell Thor, about perhaps using Thor as leverage against Loki, about what her next step was, about whether she should just kill Loki. 

There were too many considerations. Natasha felt like she imagined Clint had felt when he’d been sent to kill her. 

Except Loki had come here willingly. 

The scream alerted her to Loki thrashing about, caught in a nightmare. She managed to grab him by the shoulders and pull him close to her. He stopped thrashing enough to focus on her face, and then he looked down at his hands, at the space between them. 

He was shaking. 

“What happened?” Natasha asked. 

“What do you think?” Loki hissed. 

Torture. She wanted to ask who, or why, but Loki was still shaking and his breathing was still ragged and he was just this side of aware so instead she said, “Why did you come to me?” 

Loki continued breathing shakily, in-and-out, in-and-out, and then he managed, “You see the most.” 

“Of what?” Natasha prompted. 

Loki jerked away from her, lifted his gaze to her face. “My punishment.” 

Natasha had many things she wanted to say, but Loki in that moment disappeared. 

In his place, Natasha found herself staring at the blood-stained towels and the sullied carpet, and she knew she would have to involve the others. 

She started to plan her next moves. What she would say. What they might do. She started to think practically about how Loki had appeared, his injuries, and what they met. 

She couldn’t get the look in his eyes out of her head. Right before he disappeared. He hadn’t looked fearful, or shocked, or angry. 

He’d looked resigned. 

That disturbed her more than the blood ever would.


End file.
